from the not-very-convincing dept

I really thought we were done writing about Walter O'Brien -- the claimed "inspiration" for the TV show Scorpion. We already wrote two separate posts detailing the questionable, unbelievable or obviously false claims that he has made recently. And we did another post calling out the "professional journalists" who simply repeated his claims without any skepticism. And, once again (since this comes up every time), I have absolutely no problem with CBS making whatever TV show they want. The problem I have is with O'Brien using the obviously bogus claims to try to build a business on false premises, leading people to believe that giving him money will get you results not unlike those in the obviously farcical TV series.

In that last post, we noted that a couple of the journalists who had originally written fawning profiles had taken the concerns to heart and had tried to reach out to O'Brien to respond about the inconsistencies. Susan Karlin, at Fast Company, had written a profile about O'Brien that repeated many of the claims. When many of us raised questions, that story was briefly dropped behind an unimpeachable paywall (it said it was behind the paywall, but offered no way to pay) and then reemerged with a note acknowledging the questions raised and saying that Karlin was reaching out to O'Brien for a followup. We were skeptical that any followup would happen, but alas, late last week Karlin had a new story describing O'Brien's weak attempts at responding to the questions about his life story.

It appears he avoided most of the really damning stuff -- ridiculously claiming that "non-disclosure agreements" prevented him from discussing them. On the IQ question:

IQ: Regarding his absence from IQ lists, O'Brien wrote: “I was about nine years old when a teacher administered my IQ test," said O'Brien. "Unfortunately, as I was nine, I didn't know that I needed to keep the paperwork for future reference.”

O'Brien did not respond to a follow-up question asking, since he was using his IQ as a marketing element, why he didn’t later take a Mensa-endorsed test in case that figure got challenged.

First off, this proves what we said in our last post, that all of his claims about being "the fourth smartest" are complete bunk. Elsewhere, he had admitted that it was the Stanford-Binet test he took. At age 9, in 1983, the version of the Stanford-Binet that was out was known as the L-M version (two versions ago), in which the scores were not based on standard distributions, but rather a ratio scoring system (i.e. "this score at this age, compared to a normal person at this age"). And yet, to back up his claim of being the 4th smartest, he pointed to this chart, which uses the modern Stanford Binet "standardized" scoring system to compute "rarities." So he's mixing his metrics. Worse, research has shown that scores on the L-M test (especially at the high end) correspond to lower scores on the current Stanford-Binet test (SB5). So, even if the test was accurate, his score would be lower. On top of that, all the test showed was that at age 9 Walter was probably much brighter than other kids his age. It means nothing about him being particularly smart today. At the very least, for someone who puts so much weight on his IQ score and claims to be so smart, you'd think maybe (just maybe) he'd actually have a working understanding of how IQ scores work.

O'Brien did clear up some of the inconsistencies about his appearance in the International Olympiad in Informatics in Argentina, showing that he absolutely did attend (he has a "participant" certificate). O'Brien completely ignored the question about why his visa application to come to the US claims he came in 6th place in that competition, when it's clear he did not. At best there are reports that he came in 90th, though the explanation for why that 90th place doesn't show on the website for the Olympiad doesn't make much sense:

“The application from Ireland to compete had just missed the cut-off deadline,” said O’Brien. “We applied for an exception and it was granted, that's why Ireland doesn't appear in the registry, but did compete, and I certainly was there.”

But, clearly, the website was updated after the competition to show who won, so it's difficult to understand why they did not add his results.

O'Brien does admit to having faked the picture of the headquarters, as we pointed out, but says that the company was run virtually and he never thought people would think it was real:

Regarding the Photoshopped German building, he added, “I apologize if the building image on the website was misleading, as it was just a cool graphic that our website designer provided years ago. To me it was clearly a made up image since it has a large scorpion tail reflected in the glass and no sky in the background, but I can see how you could think it was our headquarters.”

Regarding the bogus number of 2600 employees and the UPS Store as his address:

O’Brien said Scorpion was run virtually, to reduce overhead, utilizing approximately 2,600 pre-screened independent contractors on an as-needed basis to solve large software problems for companies, individuals, and governments. “Most of our systems are either in the cloud (like Amazon's) or at a large customer's data center (like a military base), so we spend our time either at a customer site or telecommuting from our laptops,” he said. "Because we are virtual (and for security reasons), as with many companies, we use a P.O. box for our address.”

I'm all for virtual businesses running online, but there is no business in the world making over a billion dollars that can run entirely virtually without at least some semblance of a real office -- and various stories have claimed that Scorpion makes over a billion dollars in revenue. You don't run a billion dollar business out of a UPS store box. No one does. Small businesses run out of such things -- which is great for them. It's logistically impossible to run a large business that way.

The "2,600 pre-screened independent contractors" excuse is also bogus. First of all, I'm quite familiar with the expert network business, and I've never seen an expert network so careless as to come even close to suggesting that the network members are the equivalent of employees. But, more importantly, with every expert network, it's very common for the members of that network to promote that they're members on things like LinkedIn. And yet, it seems that almost none of these folks associated with Scorpion do so. It's possible that the rolodexes of the very small number of people (it appears to be less than 10) who actually do work at Scorpion may total up to 2600 people, but that's a very misleading way to promote the business.

Speaking of incredibly misleading ways to promote your business, O'Brien also responds to the hilarious claim that Scorpion was a venture fund with $204 billion under management:

O’Brien also stood by the $204 billion venture fund. That figure “was true at the time,” said O’Brien. “That statement simply referred to the total net worth of all the investors and venture capitalists that Scorpion had a relationship with and often hire Scorpion for due diligence. This is collectively referred to as a fund source as we are allowed to show these investors any new companies or inventions that we thought were worth the investors taking a closer look at.”

That's bordering on fraud -- to the point that it seems like the SEC might be interested. You don't get to claim "because I sometimes work with these investors, I can claim to have a fund worth the value of all their assets."

He also never bothers to explain why -- if he was managing a fund with over $200 billion and building up a company with over $1 billion in revenue (out of a UPS store) and 2,600 "independent contractors" -- he was still working a day job doing QA for The Capital Group.

Karlin also turns up some other lies from O'Brien that we had missed. O'Brien claimed that the following happened back in 1992:

1992 Presented A.I. discoveries, Invited to speak at the Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science conference at the University of Limerick (A.I.C.S.), by special invite from Dr. Padraig Cunningham. The youngest Scientist ever invited to present his SPEAKART project. This project was a fifth generation computer application, in the Dublin Hitachi research lab which resulted in being offered an apprentice position at HITACHI.

Karlin contacted Dr. Cunnigham and found a rather different story:

“That’s not true that I invited him to speak,” said Padraig Cunningham, now a professor in computer science at University College in Dublin, when contacted by Fast Company. “And he wasn’t offered an apprentice position at the Hitachi Dublin lab. I’d just finished working there in September, 1992, and he was not offered a job.

“I Googled his name and found this softer version of events in a news article published on one of his sites,” he added. (It reads: “Later that year [1992] Dr. Padraig Cunningham of T.C.D. invited him to attend the two-day Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science Conference in Limerick University.”)

“It appears he later hardened his claims that he was invited to speak and got a position at Hitachi,” said Cunningham. “This is a really old item, but it’s consistent with the idea that he’s become more effusive about his claims.”

This is the same thing that seems to keep coming up with O'Brien. He takes snippets of reality and extends and extends and extends those claims, embellishing the story each and every time. Being invited to attend a conference eventually turns into being invited to speak and then into getting a job.

In regards to all the other obviously bogus claims -- including the ones about "catching the Boston Marathon bombers," stopping wars, having his software misused leading to 2,600 civilian casualties in the Gulf War (yes, same number of "independent contractors" he now claims to have), stopping soldiers in Afghanistan from drinking water laced with arsenic from local drug lords... O'Brien doesn't want to respond to any of it.

“Much of our company’s work, especially with military/government clients is subject to strict Non-Disclosure Agreements, so we can’t say more than has been cleared for news.

“I’ve answered all the questions I have time to right now,” he replied in response to follow-up questions. “All that remains to be said is that I’m proud of and stand by my career, my company, and all the good we have done.”

It appears the strict non-disclosure agreements allow him to promote things that are extraordinarily dubious (and debunked by other information), but not to actually present any evidence to confirm. How convenient.

from the from-edward-r.-murrow-to-walter-o'brien dept

We've written a few times now about Walter O'Brien, the claimed inspiration for the CBS primetime TV show Scorpion. As our reporting has shown, a very large number of the claims about O'Brien's life simply don't check out when you look into the details, and in many cases appear to be flat out false. As we've said repeatedly -- though people keep bringing this up -- we don't care at all about Hollywood folks exaggerating a "based on a true story" claim. What concerns us is (1) the journalistic integrity of those engaged in promoting the false claims about Walter O'Brien for the sake of a TV show and (2) the fact that O'Brien has been using this to promote his own business, which may lead people to giving money to him under questionable pretenses. Each time I write about him, more people who have known him in the past come out of the woodwork to repeat the same claims: nice enough guy, but always massively exaggerating nearly everything.

In this post, however, I want to focus on the first part of my concern: the journalistic integrity question. Three of the main articles often cited in support of O'Brien's claims both come from "CBS News." They're actually local CBS affiliates, rather than the main CBS News, but they're clearly trading on the CBS News brand, trust and credibility, and yet they're so ridiculous as to raise serious questions about CBS's journalistic standards.

First up, we've got an article from CBS 2 Los Angeles, with news "reporter" Crystal Cruz. Like many such stories, it brings up the bogus "4th highest IQ in the world" which has already been shown to be false in our last post. It also ridiculously claims that Scorpion is "a billion dollar business" which, again, there is no evidence to support at all. Then there's this:

“The naval bases in Afghanistan, we predicted the drug lords could do biological warfare to the water supply to the base and put arsenic in the water supply to the base, and we predicted that three months ahead, before it happened,” O’Brien said. “It changed military policy because of it, and that saved over 400 lives.”

As this is being discussed in the video version, it shows a map of Afghanistan, which only serves to reinforce the fact that Afghanistan is a landlocked country. Naval bases aren't particularly useful there. Yes, there was a Navy presence -- and the Marines are a part of the Navy -- there really isn't what most people would consider to be a naval base. But, more importantly, the US military also doesn't use local drinking water because of their fear of contamination in the first place. They bring in bottled water for drinking. There are some reports (from UNICEF) of arsenic-contaminated water in Afghanistan, but it's from local mining operations, not any reports of sabotage by "drug lords." A reporter might have looked into all of this, but CBS wants to promote its TV show.

The Baltimore affiliate of CBS News, WJZ had a piece written by "reporter" Linh Bui repeating a bunch of claims about Walter that are dubious, at best. The whole "fourth highest IQ in the world" is there, of course. She also claims that Homeland Security found O'Brien in the 1980's, despite it only coming into existence after 2001. She quotes O'Brien saying that he's "stopped wars" without ever actually doing any fact checking to see if there's any basis for that at all.

More recently, Boston's WBZ, the local CBS affiliate, had its Emmy winning news anchor Kathryn Hauser claim that Walter' O'Brien helped find the Boston marathon bombers. Again, there has been no evidence that we've seen to date that comes anywhere close to supporting that claim. There was a TV interview that suggested that the FBI likely used software that was like software that O'Brien created (though, we've yet to see any evidence that Walter actually has created such software in the first place). But over time, that claim has continued to morph into this claim that he actually helped find the bombers. You'd think, that with Hauser actually being in Boston she might have gone and asked local law enforcement if there was any truth to the claim at all. But she didn't.

It's pure speculation as to why she didn't, but it's hard not to notice that all three of these reports are posted to CBS News sites and the TV show is airing on CBS. Comments on the latter two stories have pointed out problems with O'Brien's story, but no corrections or followups have been forthcoming. Because that would take actual reporting -- and would contradict the narrative that parent company CBS is selling.

Two other stories that had financial ties to the show have both put up notices pointing out concerns raised about his claims, but neither has been able to find any followups. The first was an article by CNET's Tim Stevens, which repeated some of Walter's usual claims, but after a few people contacted him, he (unlike others) was quick to admit that he may have made a mistake in taking O'Brien at his word and appended an update to the story. Since then Stevens has requested followups with O'Brien, all of which appear to have been ignored. CNET is... owned by CBS. Then there's Fast Company, where Susan Karlin wrote a similar profile of O'Brien, again repeating many of his claims. However, after people questioned it, she too was quick to add a note that many of O'Brien's claims have been questioned and there are "inconsistencies" in his story. Karlin also notes that she has contacted CBS and O'Brien along with other show producers for comment, but appears not to have received any follow up either. As we noted in our last post, Fast Company produced the Techmanity conference where O'Brien was one of the featured speakers.

Still, I appreciate Stevens' and Karlin's willingness to admit that they may have been taken in by O'Brien's claims, and it's quite telling that it appears that O'Brien and CBS are unwilling to do any followups with those who question the details. The really questionable activity is by CBS News itself for simply refusing to acknowledge the questions and simply repeating questionable claims about O'Brien that help the CBS primetime lineup.

from the make-it-stop-already dept

A few weeks ago, we wrote about "Walter O'Brien," the guy who is supposed to be the basis of the CBS TV show Scorpion. The problem we had was that O'Brien made a ton of absolutely fantastical claims and, after doing a little fact checking, none of them seemed to check out. At all. Since a few people brought this up, let me make it clear: I have no issue with exaggerating on a TV show for the sake of good entertainment. I don't even mind bogus claims like "based on a true story" because, hey, Fargo was pretty awesome. If that's all that was going on, it wouldn't be a big deal and everyone could get on with their lives.

What concerns me about the bogus Walter O'Brien story is twofold: (1) Gullible reporters simply repeat his claims without even the slightest bit of skepticism, which is just shameful reporting and (2) O'Brien and his friends aren't just making a TV show: they're trying to spin the TV show (which, as far as we can tell has close to no basis in reality) into a way to promote O'Brien's "business" with claims that are wholly unbelievable -- in that, literally, I don't think most of the claims are true. It worries me that some people will take the TV show's inflated claims at face value and think that throwing gobs of money O'Brien's way will get them the clearly exaggerated solutions the show is pitching.

Last week, O'Brien appeared with Scorpion producer (and Justin Bieber manager) Scooter Braun at the "Techmanity"* conference in San Jose, and I went to the show hoping to talk to O'Brien and/or the producers of the show to see if they could help clear up the inconsistencies in his story (many of which we detailed in the original post). Instead, despite multiple requests, I was denied an opportunity to interview them before or afterward. They did appear to show up right before going on stage, and then I was told they had to leave immediately after (though, at least one other conference attendee posted a selfie with O'Brien well over an hour after O'Brien got off stage). Despite the agenda specifically promising a Q&A with O'Brien and multiple producers, there was no Q&A (and those other producers weren't even there). A microphone stand that had been present for Q&A during earlier sessions was removed prior to the panel, so it was clear that there was no intention of a Q&A at all.

Instead, there were just more questionable claims from O'Brien, on a panel moderated by Fast Company's Chuck Salter, an "award winning" reporter who didn't seem interested in challenging a single claim from O'Brien, taking them all at face value. Fast Company, which co-produced the conference, and thus, perhaps, had business reasons for suppressing all skepticism, also wrote a big article again repeating the O'Brien myth, though that article appears to have been dropped behind a paywall.

O'Brien tells some of the same stories he's told before -- claiming the company only hires people with IQs over 150 and that people with high IQs have "low EQs" and they try to help them on that front. This leaves aside the whole fact that the concept of "EQ" is pretty questionable in the first place and that even IQ is a pretty limited and misleading tool, which may be useful for determining some innate problem solving skills in kids, but means little once they reach adulthood. Once you're an adult, however, IQ is somewhat meaningless. That doesn't stop O'Brien from continuing to assert that he has an IQ of 197, and multiple publications to claim that he's either the "fourth smartest man" in the world or has the "fourth highest IQ ever recorded."

As we noted in our original post, there is no public evidence that O'Brien actually even has such an IQ, let alone that it's the 4th highest ever recorded. In his Reddit AMA, Walter admits that the "4th highest" claim comes from just getting a 197 (still no proof shown) and using this table on the distribution of IQ to assume that he must be the 4th because a 197 IQ only should occur in 1 out of every 1.5 billion people, and then he estimated based on the number of people on the planet. Of course, for someone with such a high IQ, that shows a surprising lack of understanding how IQ actually works. He also notes that he took the Stanford-Binet IQ test, though he doesn't say when. If it was while he was a child (as suggested by his claim to have been "diagnosed" as a "child prodigy") then it's likely he took an earlier version of the Stanford-Binet test -- either the SBIV or the L-M, depending on when he took the exam. It seems noteworthy that modern research has noted that scales on the results of those two versions of the test should equal lower scores on the current SB5. The 197 score (assuming it's true), strongly suggests he took the L-M, which used a ratio scoring system, as opposed to the IV, which was standardized. As such, it also would mean that using the deviation chart Walter uses would be inaccurate, since the ratio score wasn't based on the same scoring system (you'd think someone with such a high IQ would recognize that). And, about all that would suggest was that, at a young age, he was likely far ahead of his peers, but that's about it. Either way, the whole "4th smartest man" in the world claim is clearly ridiculous.

After some other chatter, O'Brien talks (again) about hacking NASA at age 13 (he still hasn't explained how Homeland Security came to get him at the time considering Homeland Security didn't exist and wouldn't be operating in Ireland, but details, details) and then hacking into banks at age 16. Then he says he was developing some "image recognition software," which he notes he developed "for peaceful purposes" related to autonomous vehicles around that time "for the government and a private contracting group underneath the government" (not sure what that even means). Then he says that project got scrapped, and "the software got reused, without my permission, in the Gulf War," leading to "2600 casualties for civilians, because it was built for speed over accuracy." He notes that he "took that pretty hard." He then says he "didn't talk to anyone for about 18 months, I became scared of my own abilities."

I can't see how any of that is even close to accurate. The timing of the first Gulf War would have coincided with Walter being in high school, which matches his story about being recruited by the non-existent DHS, but even if he was developing image recognition software at the time, from Ireland, for the US government (really?), the idea that even after his project would be scrapped he'd then be told (as an Irish high schooler) that the same software was misused, leading to 2,600 casualties? That's not happening.

That leads to a discussion about how his company, Scorpion Computer Services, came about. He claims he was just being asked to do usual computer things -- set up computers, install operating systems, set up printers, etc and the business just grew -- to the point that he was doing work on "localization." Of course, to some extent much of that might be accurate, and Walter's own LinkedIn page suggests he was working on a bunch of fairly straightforward (i.e., no "genius IQ" required) projects around localization. This is further supported by the "references" page on the Scorpion Computer Services website, which is basically just a bunch of reference letters from the late 90s referring to what appear to be fairly mundane computer jobs he held -- often with fairly muted praise. My favorite is this one in which a development manager merely "confirms" that Walter O'Brien worked there.

Not explained is why the genius who is building amazing image recognition software for the US military is now working on Word Basic and Visual Basic for projects in Ireland... and apparently desperate for references to get a new job. Something doesn't add up. And of course, Walter still posts this letter from Steven Messino, claiming Messino is a "co-founder of Sun Microsystems." Yet, as we noted last time, Messino joined Sun years after it was a public company, and then as a "regional sales manager."

O'Brien also leaves out the fact -- as seen on his own LinkedIn page, that he was a QA guy at The Capital Group from 2002 to through March of 2009 -- at which point, in the storyline, we're supposed to be believing that he was saving the world at Scorpion Computer Services. But, no matter, at the conference, O'Brien lists out the kinds of "projects" Scorpion was supposedly handling around this time: "Handle my divorce, put a shark tank in my office, build a casino overseas, choose winning race horses based on their DNA." I'm guessing these are plotlines for future episodes of the TV show. How much they're based in reality, well, that's anyone's guess.

In past interviews, O'Brien has shied away from saying how much of the actual show is true, pretending that he can't really reveal it. Yet here, he at least suggests that the plots of the shows are almost entirely fictional (which makes sense, given the pure ridiculousness of the plots). So, for example, after a clip is shown of the TV version of Scorpion making a bunch of ridiculous assumptions to find a guy on an airplane with an analog phone turned on, O'Brien just says that "out in the desert" doing some testing they have to use "old Nokia analog phones, because it's the only thing that will pick up a signal -- so I knew that those old phones have a stronger signal." So, first of all, he seems to be admitting that the whole premise of calling the guy in the plane is made up -- it's just based on his personal experience with old analog phones out in the desert. Second, for a technical genius problem solver, he doesn't seem to have the faintest idea why analog works better out in the desert, or have much knowledge about wireless frequencies and the different ways in which analog and digital phones work. He later admits that the story of the plane flying low with the car driving under it was his "idea" (not based on reality) and that the director added the ethernet cable concept to make it "more exciting."

In other words, Walter appears to reveal that he just tosses out some ideas about technologies, and then the writers create these crazy scenarios that have almost no basis in reality (the second show appears to have been equally as unreal, focusing on a "personalized virus" that was designed for a single person. Uh, yeah).

Basically, this whole thing just continued to enforce the idea that Walter O'Brien's claims appear to be a Walter Mitty-esque imagining of the world he wants to live in, rather than one based on reality. Other stories claim that Scorpion Computer Services has "2600 people in 20 countries and over $1.3 billion in revenue" (that's from the Fast Company story). Yet, on LinkedIn I can find only 10 people who list Scorpion as an employer -- and some are merely "advisors." No, you don't expect everyone to list Scorpion or even be on LinkedIn, but 10 out of 2600 people? That's not particularly believable. Then there's the fact that the company's address is a UPS Store in Burbank, and the building shown on its website is actually a photoshopped image of the headquarters of German glass manufacturer, Glaskoch, based in Bad Driburg, Germany:

In other interviews, he's directly said -- or often coyly implied -- that his work helped "stop two wars" (at 3:09 in this video), caught the Boston bombers (though this video just says the FBI used "the kind of technology" that was developed by O'Brien -- not that he actually developed, and presents no evidence the FBI even used similar tech, let alone O'Brien's), and searched for the downed Malaysian Airlines plane, saying his software was used "to make sure the crash site wasn't tampered with."

O'Brien frequently plays up the fact that he's in the US on an EB1-1 visa, which he always notes is the "same one given to Albert Einstein and Winston Churchill." That may be true, but he makes it out like he and those two are the only ones who got this visa. Actually, thousands of people get one every year. In O'Brien's visa application he claims "he placed among the top programmers in the world in several international high-speed programming competitions, including a sixth-place finish in the 1993 Information Olympics, and first-place showings in the 1991 and 1992 Wisconsin International Computer Problem Solving Competition." Except, elsewhere reports have him coming in 90th in the 1993 Informatics Olympiad and sixth (not first) in Wisconsin. So, did he lie on his visa application too?

The various companies that O'Brien is associated with have websites that are filled with gibberish rather than actually supportable claims. "We saved $43 billion in opportunity risks over a five-year period." That doesn't make any sense. "We invented an efficiency engine that performs 250 human years of work every 1.5 hrs with over 99% improvement over human error."

An old, now deleted, part of the Scorpion website hilariously claimed that Scorpion Computer Services was a venture fund with $204 billion (with a b) under management. It also claims that it had a 7200% return in 1999. This was on his website in 2003 -- the very same time he was doing QA for The Capital Group. Odd.

The "ScenGen" software that Walter frequently touts as being able to "exhaustively... think of" and then "execute... all user actions" appears to just be a rather straightforward system for inputting a bunch of variables and brute forcing every possible combination. The documentation on it suggests that you can solve NP-complete problems, like the traveling salesman problem, just by running every possible solution through a computer program. While you, of course, could run through all possible scenarios, that's... not a particularly useful or intelligent way to solve complex problems.

Walter has hinted that one of the reasons he "went public" now is because Wikileaks revealed some of the projects he's worked on. Indeed, there is this page on Wikileaks from the hacked and leaked Stratfor emails, showing Walter trying to reach out to the founder of Stratfor, George Friedman, in 2009 saying "we should talk" and including a PowerPoint about ScenGen... and a resume for Walterwhich does not mention Scorpion Computer Services (and also lists himself as a "tech specialist" at Capital Group, rather than "Tech Executive" as his LinkedIn now claims). In 2009 -- at which point we're now supposed to believe Scorpion has been in business for 25 years. Yet, the email is sent from Walter's MSN.com email address. It also says nothing of his supposed image recognition skills, but focuses on his QA, compliance and globalization work. It also includes the same 1990s press clippings that Walter promotes on his website. There doesn't appear to be any reply or any other Walter-related info on Wikileaks.

In the presentation, though, we learn that this masterful bit of programming called ScenGen is less than 200kb in size and produces output like this:

The more you dig, the more of the same you find. Former co-workers of O'Brien's have shown up in comments or reached out to me and others directly -- and they all say the same thing. Walter is a nice enough guy, works hard, does a decent job (though it didn't stop him from getting laid off from The Capital Group), but has a penchant for telling absolutely unbelievable stories about his life. It appears that in just repeating those stories enough, some gullible Hollywood folks took him at his word (and the press did too), and now there's a mediocre TV show about those made up stories. Again, I'm all for fictionalized TV. And O'Brien, Braun and others associated with the show keep claiming that they're doing this to help "smart kids" not feel like outcasts (though, I'd think the success of Silicon Valley and the internet in general, is doing a much better job of that...). And that's great. But, telling highly questionable stories that seem easily debunked doesn't seem like a good way of helping people. It just feels... like a fraud.

In fact, the story continues to remind me of the similar case of Shiva Ayyadurai. In both cases, you seem to have guys who had a certain amount of fame about their computer programming prowess as teenagers, and where both of them still keep those newspaper clippings from their youth around and frequently highlight them and show them off as if it's proof that they did, in fact, amount to something great later in life even if the actual details of their lives don't quite match the hype. They both seem to cling to those predictions of their youth as if they had to come true. In both cases, they successfully convinced some folks -- notably, a gullible press -- to spin the fictionalized account as being something more. I have no problem with people exaggerating and puffing up their own stories -- that's pretty common. But when it's being used in a way to fool the press and the public and take credit where little is deserved, often with ulterior motives in mind, that seems problematic.

* Side note: in nearly 20 years of conference attending, Techmanity appeared to be one of the worst organized events I've ever attended. In many ways, it felt like the Walter O'Brien of conferences -- making lots of fantastical claims that didn't hold up to much scrutiny ("Silicon Valley's Biggest Annual Gathering"? Not even close. They held the "Techmanitarian Awards", which was described as an "Exclusive, VIP celebration," yet anyone could have just wandered in -- and, even then, not too many people did. "The most dangerous and disruptive startups on the planet"? Again, not even close). The event organizers appeared to figure out a way to get a few famous Hollywood/music industry folks (Jared Leto, Weezer, Troy Carter, Scooter Braun, Thievery Corporation), but very few actual tech minds. The whole thing seemed designed to get as much money out of sponsors as possible, with little thought to the actual content of the event, beyond "ooh, famous people, the sponsors will love that!"

There was lots of talk about "bottom up" creations and the end of powerful top down efforts, yet almost no sessions had any interactions (only a few even had basic Q&A). The pinnacle of poor organizing was highlighted by the scheduled promise of a free showing of Brian Knappenberger's documentary on Aaron Swartz, The Internet's Own Boy, at a local movie theater in San Jose. A bunch of attendees trekked over to the theater only to be told the theater had no idea what any of us were talking about. On contacting the media relations people at the conference, we were told that someone "forgot" to actually set that up, despite it being on the agenda. A bunch of angry conference-goers were left pondering what to do outside the theater. I feel particularly bad for the various startups who must have paid a pretty penny to be part of "Startlandia", a bunch of startup kiosks that went mostly ignored. Some I spoke to flew in especially for this event, expecting something with a lot more substance. Instead, they got a Potemkin Village of a tech conference.

Finally, at least the "media" side of the event was organized by Racepoint Group. I knew the name sounded familiar -- and then remembered that the CEO of Racepoint is Larry Weber, the PR "guru" behind the Shiva Ayyadurai story. I don't know if/how Racepoint is connected to the whole Scorpion thing, but at the very least, the connection is an amusing coincidence. Perhaps there's a PR business to be built in building up fake tech heroes.

from the more-of-this-crap? dept

There's apparently a new TV show on CBS called Scorpion that has received mixed-to-decent reviews. It supposedly is about some computer security geniuses/outcasts who help "solve complex, global problems." However, Annalee Newitz's description of the stupidest, most batshit insane hacker scene ever from the first episode, suggests that the show is not worth watching. In the past few years, it had been kind of nice to see Hollywood actually seem to have some clue about accurately portraying hacking in some situations, but that's all apparently been tossed out the window with Scorpion. Even if you don't read Newitz's story (or view the video clip), just know it involves an ethernet cable hanging from a flying plane with a car racing beneath it to download some backup software needed by the airport so planes can land. Yeah.

A big part of the show's marketing is the claim that the story is partially based on the life of one of the show's executive producers, Walter O'Brien. CBS News has an article talking up these claims of O'Brien's amazing feats, helping out its parent company, CBS, who broadcasts the show. But... for such a "genius," many of O'Brien's claims are coming under scrutiny, and they're not holding up well. Having just gone through the whole Shiva Ayyadurai / inventor of email crap, it's beginning to sound like a similar case of someone pumping up their own past for publicity purposes.

The claims about O'Brien are both odd and oddly specific. Here's CBS's reporting:

Walter O’Brien has the fourth highest IQ in the world.

Elsewhere, he claims that he was "diagnosed as a child prodigy with an IQ of 197." First off, there are significant questions about IQ as a particularly useful measurement of anything. Furthermore, the idea that there's some definitive list of those with the highest IQs seems equally questionable. A quick Google search will show you a whole bunch of "top 10 lists" of IQs -- all of them different, and none of them including anyone named Walter O'Brien.

Among other things, O'Brien's story claims that he began Scorpion Computer Services in the mid-1980s and that "Scorpion has mitigated risk for 7 years on $1.9 trillion of investments and has invented and applied Artificial Intelligence engines to protect United States war fighters in Afghanistan." It's not even entirely clear what that means. It goes on:

Since 1988, Scorpion's team of world class experts partner with clients on a global basis, across industries, to add real measurable value in mission-critical initiatives from planning, to execution, to running the business. Scorpion's senior management has a collective knowledge of more than 413 technologies, 210 years in IT, and 1,360 projects. Scorpion himself has created over 177 unique technology inventions including ScenGen and WinLocX and is one of the world's leading experts in the application of computer science and artificial intelligence to solve complex industry challenges."

Again with the odd, and oddly specific claims. They have knowledge of 413 technologies? Do they have a list somewhere? Does it include the coffee machine in the lunch room? Did they send someone out to get the new iPhone 6 to make it 414? Either way, there are... just a few problems with these claims. As Langton points out, the "headquarters" of Scorpion Computer Services Inc. does not appear to be a particularly large or impressive company. Its headquarters is actually... a UPS store address That report notes that it has one employee, and revenue of $66k. It's possible that the report is inaccurate, but for such a big and successful company, you'd expect to see... at least a bit more historical evidence of its existence. But there is none.

And then there's this page (and here's the web archive version in case O'Brien figures out how to delete the old page), which apparently used to be the site for Walter's Scorpion computer Services, that, um, looks like it was built on GeoCities -- complete with the animated fire torches next to the dreadfully designed logo.

For a big, massively successful company... you'd expect, um, something a bit more professional. Walter's own Linkedin profile notes that he actually worked at Capital Group for a while, with redditors claiming he was just a QA guy there, though his profile says he was a "technology executive." Many other claims on the company's website read like self-promotional gibberish. "We saved $43 billion in opportunity risks over a five-year period." "We invented an efficiency engine that performs 250 human years of work every 1.5 hrs with over 99% improvement over human error." By the way, the "see how" link on that last one doesn't actually show you "how" it just takes you to a page about how the company is a value added reseller "for proven IT products." The entire website looks like gibberish from someone trying to sound like a real tech company. It reminds me of Jukt Micronics.

Langton also turned up that O'Brien appears to have another "company" called Strike Force, using the same UPS Store address, and with very, very, very, very similar website design and bullshittery. That site has a really bizarre "what others say" page, listing out random referrals for O'Brien, which are generally just the standard empty "personal reference letters" people without much experience tend to ask some former colleagues for when looking for a new job. The first one is from Steven Messino (with the date conveniently stripped off) which looks like the generic job reference letter:

Note that O'Brien claims that Messino is the co-founder of Sun. That's... not true. Anyone who knows anything about the history of Sun knows it was co-founded by Andy Bechtolsheim, Bill Joy, Scott McNealy and Vinod Khosla in 1982. Messino's own LinkedIn page shows he joined Sun in 1988. Six years after it was founded. Also, Sun had its IPO in 1986. So it's not like this was a small company when Messino joined... as a "regional sales manager."

Basically, everywhere you look, O'Brien's claims are either massively exaggerated to downright ridiculous.

There are also some odd personal claims about "Homeland Security" coming to find him as a 13-year old boy for hacking into NASA. Except, when he was 13, there was no Homeland Security -- an agency established after the September 11, 2001 attacks. O'Brien also claims this:

Scorpion was born and raised in Ireland, and at 16, ranked first in national high speed computer problem solving competitions. At 18, he competed in the World Olympics in Informatics and has ranked as high as the sixth fastest programmer in the world.

Sixth fastest programmer in the world? Really? Some folks on Reddit noted that it doesn't appear Ireland competed in the "International Olympiad in Informatics" in 1993, though someone else found a report from the University of Sussex, which O'Brien attended, noting that O'Brien had come in 6th in a different contest, but in the Olympiad itself, he came in 90th. I mean that's great for an 18 year old, but it hardly makes him into some programming genius.

And we won't even touch the claims that his programming helped catch the Boston Marathon bombers, because... well... really?

Frankly, the parallels with Ayyadurai and the email story are there. It certainly appears that, like Ayyadurai, O'Brien was a bright kid who did some impressive programming as a teenager, but then didn't appear to amount to all that much noteworthy beyond that. Try searching for any news references or evidence of O'Brien doing anything other than in the last few months in the publicity leading up to this new TV show. However, he is trying to reinvent himself and rewrite his history as some sort of genius programmer responsible for all sorts of amazing things, very little of which seems directly supportable. Of course, CBS doesn't really care, so long as they have a fun TV show that people watch, but at the very least, they shouldn't continue to spread the exaggerated myths about O'Brien that appear to have little basis in fact.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Biomimicry for robot design is a fascinating area of research, and all kinds of interesting robots are being developed that almost look like natural creatures. Here are just a few more examples of machines that are adopting biologically-inspired features.